Sir Joshua Reynolds pra 1723–1792
NG 681 
Captain Robert Orme

Judy Egerton, 2000

Extracted from:
Judy Egerton, The British Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2000).

1756

Oil on canvas, 239 × 147 cm (94⅛ × 57⅞ in.)

Inscribed J. Reynolds pinxit 1756 in red lower right

Provenance

Evidently not commissioned by the sitter or his relatives, but painted as a speculation; remained in Reynolds’s studio until purchased 1 December 1777 by 5th Earl of Inchiquin, then by descent through the issue of his first marriage (to Mary, Countess of Orkney in her own right)¹ to his great‐grandson, 5th Earl of Orkney, by whom sold Christie’s 10 May 1863 (62), bt Sir Charles Eastlake for the National Gallery.

Exhibited

SA 1761 (84, as ‘Ditto [whole‐length] of a gentleman’); BI 1860 (119); Washington, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, George Washington: A Figure upon the Stage, 1982 (no cat. nos, fig. 82, pp. 128–9); Paris, Reynolds, 1985–6 (12, repr. p. 139); RA , Reynolds, 1986 (26, repr. pp. 86, 188).

At the Tate Gallery 1963–4.

Literature

Reynolds’s Ledgers, 1 December 1777 (Cormack 1970, p. 156); Walpole, Notes…on Exhibitions 1760–91, p. 75; Northcote 1818, pp. 65–6; Graves and Cronin, II, 1899–1901, pp. 711–12; Whitley 1928,1, p. 175; Waterhouse 1941, p. 41, plate 37; Davies 1959, pp. 81–2; Waterhouse 1973, pp. 18, 37, plates 14 and 15 (detail); Homan Potterton, ‘Reynolds’s Portrait of Captain Robert Orme in the National Gallery’, Burlington Magazine, 106, 1976, p. 106, figs. 67–9; Potterton 1976, p. 20, plates 14–16; Penny 1986, pp. 187–8.

? Copy

Graves and Cronin, III, 1899, p. 1091, identify a small (21 × 15 in.) ‘Portrait of an Officer’ (then coll. A. Parrish) as of Captain Robert Orme.

Technical Notes

Cleaned in 1960. In good condition, with no significant loss or damage. There is some cracking and wrinkling of the paint in the darks, but this condition is less severe than in many of Reynolds’s paintings. A paint sample of the red of the coat, taken from near the lower of the two fastened buttons, shows an admixture of coarse and fine vermilion with a deep red lake and a minor proportion of red earth.

Discussion

The sitter is Captain Robert Orme (1725–90), portrayed at the age of 31 during the war against the French for supremacy in the North American colonies. First commissioned as ensign in the 34th Foot, he transferred to the Coldstream Guards on 16 September 1745 and was promoted lieutenant on 24 April 1751.² When General Edward Braddock of the Coldstream Guards was appointed commander‐in‐chief of the British forces in America, he selected Orme as his aide‐de‐camp, giving him the acting rank of captain. With two battalions of a force of 6000 men which had been voted for the prosecution of the war, they arrived in Virginia on 20 February 1755. Orme retains a place in American history because of his brief friendship with the young George Washington. Washington in 1755 was aged 23; he had been Colonel of a Virginian regiment, but in May 1755 volunteered to serve under General Braddock. Like Orme, Washington became one of Braddock’s aides‐de‐camp, and he and Orme became friends.³

Waterhouse describes NG 681 as ‘a heroic military portrait of a soldier of no particular consequence’.⁴ In the Society of Artists exhibition in 1761, it was described simply as ‘Portrait of a gentleman’; an annotation by Horace Walpole in his copy of the exhibition catalogue identifies it as ‘Captain Orme with a horse’.⁵ Orme’s portrait (84 in the exhibition) hung next to Reynolds’s portrait (85, see p. 246, fig. 4) of General Lord Ligonier,⁶ undoubtedly a soldier of far greater ‘consequence’ than Captain Orme. Yet while the Ligonier is in a grander manner (and on an even grander scale) than Orme’s portrait, it is more conventional and less personal. An unidentified young officer whose father had asked him to report on the exhibition dutifully admired the portrait of General Lord Ligonier (‘…little inferior to some of the greatest masters of the ancients’), but of Captain Orme he was moved to write: ‘There is an officer of the Guards with a letter in his hand, ready to mount his horse with all that fire mixed with rage that war and the love of his country can give.’⁷ ‘In the background’, he noted, ‘a view of a skirmish.’

That ‘skirmish’ in the background (not easy to read) almost certainly represents the episode of 9 July 1755, disastrous for the British but famous in American history as ‘Braddock’s Defeat’. On that day, General Braddock, accompanied by Orme and the rest of his staff, advanced with a large force of British and provincial troops towards the French garrison of Fort Du Quesne⁸ on the Ohio River. Having crossed the Monongahela River, they had to pass through a forest ravine: and there they were ambushed by French and Indian riflemen hidden above the cliffs. British cannon‐fire was almost useless against the invisible enemy. Braddock’s troops were virtually massacred; a survivor reckoned the number of men ‘killed, wounded or left on the Field’ to be 896.⁹ Only George Washington, whom Orme described as conspicuous that day for ‘the greatest courage and resolution’, seemed to be under ‘the miraculous care of Providence’.¹⁰ Braddock was mortally wounded; Orme, himself wounded, cried out that he would give 60 guineas to anyone who would convey his general out of the range of fire. Braddock survived only a few days, his last words allegedly being ‘Next time we shall know how to deal with them’.¹¹

The despatch in Orme’s hand is illegible: possibly he is carrying the news of Braddock’s death to headquarters. Orme’s own wounds (unspecified) cannot have been grave; by September 1755, said to be ‘nearly recovered’, he sailed [page 207][page 208]for England, charged with ‘explaining American affairs to the Duke [of Cumberland]’ and other military authorities.¹² The manuscript journal which Orme kept as Braddock’s ADC survives;¹³ in correct military style, it is factual and impersonal, imparting less about Orme’s American experience than is conveyed by the urgent, almost haunted look which Reynolds captured in his portrait (fig. 1).

Orme probably sat to Reynolds late in 1755, soon after his return to England. Reynolds’s sitter book for that year is missing, but the portrait is dated 1756. Orme sat for it in his campaign (i.e. not full dress) uniform as an officer of the Coldstream Guards: scarlet frock‐coat with blue lapels and cuffs over a grey waistcoat, all trimmed with broad gold lace, buff breeches and black gaiters over buckled shoes. Only the hilt and the tip of his sword show, since the sword‐belt is worn, correctly, under the coat; his long hair is tied behind his neck, and a blue and gold sash is looped over his horse’s saddle.

Orme does not appear to have commissioned his portrait; certainly he never owned it. Perhaps Reynolds took the initiative in asking Orme (who may have been a Devonshire man,¹⁴ like himself) to sit. At this stage in his rise to fame, Reynolds was keen to keep heroic full‐length portraits on display in his studio, so that (in Waterhouse’s words) ‘sitters who came with more moderate intentions could see what possibilities of immortality were available’.¹⁵ Reynolds could have read accounts of Orme’s role in ‘Braddock’s Defeat’ in London newspapers and in the Gentleman’s Magazine for August 1755.¹⁶ He may also have hoped that the portrait of a military hero would attract an engraver, and thereby increase his own fame. That there was likely to be a demand for such engravings is suggested by the comments of the young officer whose admiration for Orme’s portrait has already been quoted: he added that he hoped that Mr Reynolds would ‘oblige the world’ with prints of both Captain Orme and Lord Ligonier: ‘if he does he will have military subscribers enough.’ But Captain Orme was never engraved. Given the demand for engravings after Reynolds, this is puzzling.

James Northcote, who joined Reynolds’s studio in the mid-1770s, later recalled that the portrait attracted much notice in Reynolds’s studio ‘by its boldness and singularity’.¹⁷ Captain Orme was painted on the same scale as Commodore Keppel (reproduced on p. 203, fig. 1), which Reynolds had painted in 1753–4 but managed to retain for several years on view in his studio: displayed together, they must have presented an impressive appearance. Captain Orme does not have the same qualities which make Commodore Keppel a great work, but to different degrees, both are in Northcote’s category of portraits which ‘assume the rank of history’.¹⁸ Captain Orme remained on Reynolds’s hands until 1771, when it was purchased, apparently simply as a fine example of Reynolds’s work, by the newly succeeded 5th Earl of Inchiquin (no relation of the sitter, and not yet connected by marriage to the artist).

As Homan Potterton demonstrated in 1976,¹⁹ Reynolds derived the pose of both Orme and his horse from a detail in one of the lunette frescoes by Jacopo Ligozzi (fig. 2) in the Cloister of the Ognissanti in Florence; he made a sketch of it on the spot in 1752 (fig. 3), no doubt anticipating that it might be useful for some future portrait involving a sitter and a horse (the latter never his strong point). Ligozzi’s figure holds his horse’s reins and is evidently about to swing himself up into the saddle, thus turning his back to the spectator. For Captain Orme, Reynolds reversed the composition. Orme stands, momentarily paused, and facing the spectator. Reynolds cannot be said to have dealt entirely successfully with the ensuing problem of how to represent his right arm: it holds the reins, more or less as Ligozzi’s figure does, but is not convincingly articulated to the shoulder, instead extended like a bolster upon his horse’s back.²⁰ Nevertheless, his sketch of the Ligozzi served him well. He was sufficiently pleased with the poses of Captain Orme and his horse to repeat them three years later (and exactly, down to the horse’s markings) in his portrait of Cornet Nehemiah Winter, 11th Dragoons,²¹ and in 1782 he adapted the pose of Orme’s horse for his portrait of Colonel George Coussmaker,²² this time with variations (unlike the preoccupied Captain Orme, Colonel Coussmaker is portrayed at leisure).

Noting Reynolds’s reverence throughout his career for ‘the ancestral images of British seventeenth‐century nobility, as defined for eternity by Van Dyck’, Robert Rosenblum suggests that Captain Orme’s pose (and presumably that of his horse) is ‘an allusion to the portrait of Charles I’ (Louvre);²³ but it is an allusion, not a direct borrowing.

Orme resigned from the Army in October 1756. The rest of his life is fairly obscure. In or about 1756 he married Audrey, daughter of the 3rd Viscount Townshend of Raynham, Hertfordshire; the marriage was contrary to the [page 209]wishes of her parents (they had intended her to marry Lord George Lennox), and the couple reputedly eloped.²⁴ They lived at first in Hertford, but when Orme made his will in 1771, he was living at Topsham in Devon, where he may have inherited property, and where he constructed a mansion which came to be known as ‘The Retreat’.²⁵ In 1778 Orme’s son, on admission to his Cambridge college, gave his father’s address as ‘of Devonshire, and of Bergham, Brabant, Netherlands’,²⁶ the latter address ominously suggesting a refuge from creditors. Orme died on 17 June 1790 ‘at Mr Bourchier’s house, in Queen‐Street, Mayfair’.²⁷

Notes